The present invention relates to a monitor control apparatus for monitoring the normal operation and fault conditions of the equipments and devices of water and sewage plants, building and factory equipments, and various production plants.
Generally, in a monitor control apparatus for monitoring the normal operation and fault conditions of plant equipments and devices, the normal operation and fault conditions of the plant equipments and devices including pumps and motors are monitored and controlled by displaying a graphic screen and the images of the equipments and devices of the plant on a CRT display unit.
The graphic screen is defined as a screen on which the plant equipments and devices are modeled and displayed in symbols, and the operation and fault conditions of a given plant equipments or devices are indicated by changing the color of or flickering the symbol of the particular equipment or device.
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of a conventional monitor control apparatus.
This monitor control apparatus comprises a controller 2, a monitor camera 3, a data processing unit 4 and a CRT display unit 6.
The controller 2 retrieves operating condition signals indicating the operating conditions of a plurality of equipments and devices including pumps and valves of the plant 1, and outputs by converting them into the operating condition data a in the state of "1" for normal or "0" for a fault, for example. Also, the controller 2 retrieves a control signal from a host system and thereby operates the equipments and devices of the plant 1.
The monitor camera 3 takes an image of each equipment or device of the plant 1.
The data processing unit 4 retrieves and processes the operating condition data a as required of each equipment or device of the plant 1, and thus supplies the control data required for the controller 2.
The CRT display unit 6 includes a pointing device 5 such as a touch panel or a mouse.
The data processing unit 4 displays the graphic image of the plant over the entire screen of the CRT display unit 6, and has the function of displaying the image of each equipment or device of the plant 1 supplied from the monitor camera 3 in a window in a predetermined area on the graphic screen.
Now, the operation of this monitor control apparatus will be explained.
An input data receiver 11 is for receiving the operating condition data a sent from each equipment or device of the plant 1 through the controller 2 and sends the operating condition data a to an input data/display collation section 12.
The input data/display collation section 12 retrieves the operating condition data a sent from the input data receiver 11, and collates the operating condition data a with the graphic screen display data such as shown in FIG. 2 stored in the graphic screen display data base 13. On the basis of the result of this collation, an equipment or device (a pump, a valve, etc.) of the plant 1 is specified and the operating condition of the specified equipment or device is discriminated. The result of this discrimination of the operating condition together with the symbol data and the symbol coordinate data of the equipment or device shown in FIG. 2 is sent to the graphic screen display section 14.
On the basis of the symbol data and the symbol coordinate data sent from the input data/display collation section 12, the graphic screen display section 14 changes the display condition of the symbols of the equipment or device of the plant 1 appearing on the graphic screen and stores them in an image memory 15. The CRT display controller 16 is for reading the graphic screen stored in the image memory 15 and displaying it on the CRT display unit 6.
The image of each equipment or device of the plant 1 taken by the monitor camera 3, on the other hand, is converted into an image data at an image conversion means 17, sent to the CRT display controller 16, stored in a predetermined area of the image memory 15 in accordance with a window display program, and displayed similarly in a window on the CRT display unit 6.
Then, on the basis of the result of monitoring on the graphic screen, the following operation is performed using the pointing device 5 such as a touch panel.
Specifically, the operator designates a symbol of an appropriate plant equipment or device on the graphic screen of the CRT display unit by the pointing device 5. Then, a touch coordinate detector 18 detects the coordinate of the designated portion on the graphic screen and sends out the coordinate to a touch coordinate/display data collation section 19.
The touch coordinate/display data collation section 19 collates the designated coordinate data on the graphic screen with the graphic screen display data stored in the data base 13, and on the basis of this collation, specifies an equipment or device. At the same time, the touch coordinate/display data collation section 19 controls the CRT display controller 16 thereby to display operation and stop icons shown in FIG. 3 or the like icons stored in the image memory 15 on the graphic screen of the CRT display unit 6.
Upon designation of any one of the icons by the operator, the content of operation selected for the specified equipment or device is sent out to the controller 2 through an output data transmitter 20. As a result, the related plant device is controlled by the controller 2.
Since the graphic screen of the CRT display unit 6 displays each equipment or device of the plant 1 in a simplified form, however, the operator is required to operate the system while watching the image of the monitor camera 3.
After determining which equipment or device of the plant displayed as an image corresponds to which symbol on the graphic screen, the symbol displayed on the graphic screen is required to be manipulated.
Also, the change in the operating condition from a fault to the normal state of each equipment or device of the plant 1 as a result of monitoring operation is required to be ascertained on the graphic screen or the image of the plant. With the increase in the scale of the plant and the number of equipments and devices to be monitored, therefore, the problem has been posed that an increased burden is imposed on the operator monitoring the plant.
Specifically, in the above-mentioned the monitor control apparatus, the image and the graphic screen are displayed separately, and the monitoring by image and the manipulation by the graphic screen are carried out separately from each other. Even in the case where a fault is found by the operator on the image, therefore, comparison with the symbols on the graphic screen takes considerable time, thereby making it impossible to quickly accommodate the fault of the plant equipment or device 1. Also, the possibility of erroneous operation of the equipments and devices of the plant 1 is liable to occur due to the error in comparison between each equipment or device of the plant 1 and the corresponding symbol on the graphic screen.